A report written by 11 retired 3- and 4-star generals calls on the White House to do more to combat climate change.

The authors’ concern is that a rapidly warming environment will create threats to national security. They foresee conflicts over water resources, increased instability resulting from rising seas, and massive migrations of refugees.

Former Army Chief of Staff Gordon Sullivan and former Middle East peace envoy Anthony Zinni were among the contributors to the report.

A national security think-tank, the CNA Corporation, brought the authors together and provided the scientific advice that they required to write “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change.”

According to the International Herald Tribune, the report makes a “veiled reference to Bush’s refusal to join an international treaty to cut greenhouse gas emissions.” The section of the CNA document referred to calls on the United States to “become a more constructive partner with other nations to fight global warming and cope with its consequences.”

Stanford scientist and co-author of a recent UN report on climate change Terry Root said that the CNA Corporation document may be too alarmist in terms of timescale. But he agreed that instability is on its way. “We’re going to have a war over water,” Root said.

The CNA document is the second report in a month to come from private consultants to the U.S. government warning of the security risks of climate change. A March report was written by Global Business Network.

Retired marine corps general Anthony Zinni was wounded serving in Vietnam and is an ex-Middle East peace envoy. As early 1998, he spoke out against a U.S. invasion of Iraq: “A weakened, fragmented, chaotic Iraq … is more dangerous in the long run than a contained Saddam is now.”

The CNA document follows the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the wording of which was finalized on April 6, 2007. The IPCC concluded that, among other problems, 75–250 million people in Africa could face water shortages by 2020.

This isn’t the first time figures in the U.S. military have been concerned about the security ramifications of climate change. In 2003, the Pentagon commissioned a report from security advisers Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall titled “An abrupt Climate Change Scenario and its Implications for United States National Security.”

The Schwartz–Randall Report focuses on one possible effect of global warming, the shutdown of the Gulf Stream waters that warm the east coast and northern Europe. The consequences could include mass starvation, rapid nuclear proliferation, and chronic conflict as nations compete for diminishing resources.

Peter Schwartz helped write another report on this issue, which was published in March 2007. “Look at Somalia in the early 1990s,” Schwartz said. “You had disruption driven by drought, leading to the collapse of a society.” This video from UNICEF narrates that period in Somali history.

This January, Bush mentioned climate change in his State of the Union address for the first time in his six years in office. There was much subsequent speculation that he was signaling a policy shift on the issue, with his talk of Americans becoming “better stewards of the environment.”

With regard to Bush’s alternative energy initiatives, the president of the Solar Energy Industry Association said, “This is the first president in 26 years to urge solar power development in the State of the Union.” On the other hand, says MSNBC, “Critics tended to say the president did not go far enough, fast enough.”

The New York Times reported on scientists concerned that Al Gore might be “overselling our certainty about knowing the future.” The science correspondent at Reason magazine dissects that article and considers how Gore may be “a global warming exaggerator.”

British physicist John Tyndall identified the relationship between the chemical composition of the atmosphere and global temperatures for the first time 150 years ago. Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer for the New Yorker and author of the best-selling study on climate change Field Notes from a Catastrophe. She says, “The principles of global warming are as well established as any in physics.”

Last year, MIT professor Richard Lindzen, a critic of “global-warming alarmists,” wrote an op-ed piece discussing the claims that increased world temperatures will produce more hurricanes, a conclusion he believes typical of contemporary hysteria.

The study, “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,” describes climate change as a “threat multiplier,” operating in “already fragile regions, exacerbating conditions that lead to failed states.”

On February 2, 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a report identifying a 95% certainty that global industry is having a significant detrimental effect on the world environment.

In June 2006, America’s National Research Council published a report on climate change, compiled at the behest of Congress. The report states that the last few decades of the 20th century were very probably warmer than any comparable period in the previous 400 years. But the report concluded that technical limitations meant that temperature estimates for years prior to 1600 were no more than plausible.

The US Senate’s 1997 Byrd–Hagel Resolution determined that the United States would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon emissions. The resolution states that America will not do so while developing countries remain exempt from limits on carbon emissions.

Certain translucent gases in our atmosphere trap the suns rays, warming the planet. This is the greenhouse effect. Without it the earth would be frozen solid. As this animated BBC guide explains, “Most mainstream scientists believe a human–driven increase in ‘greenhouse gases’ is increasing the effect.”